The Tenth of January

While reading “The Tenth of January” by Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, the first thing that jumped out at me was all of the instances that symbolism was used. Gardner describes symbolism as “Careful writers choose their words and images for maximum impact, filling them with as much meaning as possible and inviting their readers to interpret them” (Gardner 59). I completely agree with this interpretation of what symbolism is, because what stood out to me in this story as “symbolism” might not have occurred to someone else the same way that read this story. Symbolism is very much so how you personally see something relating to something else in the story with tied meanings.

The symbolism that stuck out the most to me was towards the beginning of the story, the author referenced “the broken fence” in multiple instances. From my point of view, a broken fence makes me think of how broken Asenath and her life were. Instead of just referring to the fence as being broken once, the author describes the fence as broken three different times in the story, seeming to purposely put emphasis on the fact that it was broken.

The author first said “It was a damps unwholesome place, the street in which she lived, cut short by a broken fence, a sudden steep, and the water; filled with children,—they ran from the gutters after her, as she passed,—and filled to the brim; it tipped now and then, like an over-full soup-plate, and spilled out two or three through the break in the fence” (Phelps 2). She then followed up with “One night there was a knocking at the door, and a hideous, sodden thing borne in upon a plank. The crowded street, tired of tipping out little children, had tipped her mother staggering through the broken fence” (Phelps 3). In these excerpts, the author refers to the fence being broken twice in one sentence describing the girl’s house. This also symbolizes how broken the poor girl’s life was. She not only had a broken life, by the fact that she would wander searching for food some nights hungry, and had a mother whose hand scarred her face, but she also had a broken image. The scar accentuating her face and her humpback covered by a cape gave the other children way to constantly tease her and make fun of her. She was seen as ugly by many, and broken to the audience.